Residents of Hancock Park gathered last month at Marlborough School for their annual homeowners meeting to discuss neighborhood issues and elect the association’s leadership for the next year. The group also heard from James O’Sullivan, president of the Miracle Mile Residential Association, and City Council Member David Ryu about the issues of homelessness and affordable housing, as well as reports from volunteer board members.
O’Sullivan, who also serves as vice president for the legal advocacy organization “Fix the City,” and who is a vocal opponent of efforts by State Senator Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco) to eliminate zoning for single family homes, began the evening.
“Sixty-five percent of the Miracle Mile are apartments, R-2 or R-3, 35-40 percent is R-1,” said Sullivan, adding the he has always looked up to Hancock Park for leadership on neighborhood preservation and was hopeful the association and its committed residents would not be ground down by the relentless efforts of Sacramento legislators who are “trying to destroy single family residential neighborhoods.”
But the highlight of the meeting was the presentation by Ryu, who gave one of the most passionate pleas on behalf of the challenges the City faces and what needs to be done to address homelessness that this reporter has heard him deliver.
Ryu began his remarks to the influential homeowners group by noting that he was pleased to report that, as he embarks on his 2020 re-election campaign, he has delivered on every campaign promise he’d made to the neighborhood in his last campaign.
He cited the creation of a Discretionary Funds Task Force to advise him on the use of nearly $2 million dollars in council office discretionary funds. The nine-member panel is appointed by Ryu and reviews requests for funds from various constituent groups in the district.
He also cited his efforts to fix the neighborhood’s concrete streets, which started with a pilot project of three intersections to determine the cost…which was unknown at the time, Ryu said, because the city had not repaired concrete street is 80 years. There is now $7 million in the city budget for repairs to concrete streets and $42 million to repair asphalt streets, along with an improved formula for determining how all streets get repaired, instead of withdrawing streets from consideration, as had been done in the past.
Finally, Ryu pointed to his efforts to trim all the trees in Hancock Park over the past three years. Ryu also said he’s been very supportive of adding staff to the City’s Department of Urban Forestry, which has hired 45 new staff members.
“I have been working to build the capacity within the city so we can rebuild our tree canopy,” said Ryu. “Hancock Park and Windsor Square are leading the way on how we grow and preserve our tree canopy.”
But the lion’s share of Ryu’s time was spent on the issues of housing and homelessness, which he said are linked together.
“Homelessness is the biggest crisis we face,” said Ryu. “This is my background,” he reminded the group, “I worked for the second largest mental health hospital and largest homeless outreach provider for 12 years.” Then, Ryu explained his three-pronged approach to address homelessness.
“First, we have to start with housing,” said Ryu. Voters agreed to spend $455 million over the next ten years to provide services to homeless people administered by the county, explained Ryu, citing Measure HHH, which would raise $1.2 billion to build housing across the county. He said there were six projects built in his district in the past four years.
But, according to Ryu, building alone won’t solve the problem.
“This is prong 2,” said Ryu, ” We have to stop the bleeding; we have to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. No mater how much we build, it won’t be enough unless we can prevent more people from becoming homeless.”
According to Ryu, there are an estimated 722,000 people in the county of Los Angeles who are economically unstable, and who, he explained, are just one or two paychecks away from a homeless crisis.
He proposed a number of ways to do that, including increasing protections for tenants. He said he is looking into levying a vacancy tax on housing units that sit empty, and take away the incentive for investors to hold empty units. But first, he said he wants to conduct a study to determine an accurate vacancy rate in the city. He said he also believes the city may soon have too much housing, which seems crazy in the middle of a housing crisis, but Ryu explained the City is on track to meet and even exceed the state’s regional housing needs assessment, based on population trends. But it’s at the wrong price level, Ryu said…and LA needs more affordable housing.
“Ninety-three percent of the units built in the last five years in the city of Los Angeles have been luxury housing,” said Ryu, “When I took office, the most expensive 2 bedroom apartment in the Miracle Mile was $4,000 a month, now it’s $11,000! We opposed SB50 because it’s a one-size-fits all. That’s not good. We need an affordability component, so we can make sure that gets built.”
Citing the Sunkist project in Sherman Oaks as an example, Ryu said he is committed to working with residents and developers to bring everyone to the table early on and work through the issues. According to Ryu, the Sunkist project had been stalled for years, but through his office’s efforts, they were able to reach a consensus and the project now includes moderate income housing.
Finally, Ryu discussed his third prong — changing the state’s current mental health laws to make it easier to help the 1% of the homeless who are most severely in need. Recently, Ryu introduced a motion that would expand the definition of “gravely disabled” to include “medical treatment where the lack or failure of such treatment results in substantial physical harm or death.” The expanded definition would allow officials to more effectively treat preventable causes of death among the homeless population and allow for a higher standard of care to homeless individuals suffering from mental illness.
Ryu said he is optimistic that progress can be made, because everyone is working together. He challenged everyone to view the crisis of homelessness as a poverty crisis and spoke about the importance of implementing poverty preventions programs like paid parental leave or children’s savings accounts that actually help prevent people from falling into homelessness. According to Ryu, data has shown that a low-income child with up to $500 in a dedicated savings account is three times more likely to enroll in, and four times more likely to graduate from, post-secondary education than a similar low-income child with no savings.
(As we were preparing this story, we got word that the City Council has unanimously approved giving every incoming first grader in LAUSD a savings account dedicated for higher education. The Children’s Savings Account (CSA) program, dubbed “Opportunity LA,” has been pioneered by Ryu, in partnership with County Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Hilda L. Solis, aalong with LAUSD Boardmembers Nick Melvoin and Monica Garcia. Modeled after existing CSA programs in San Francisco, Boston, St. Louis, and other cities and states, Opportunity LA will be the nation’s largest such program, establishing dedicated savings accounts with $50 seed deposits for every student enrolled in an LAUSD public or affiliated charter school.)
After taking questions, he invited everyone to become more knowledgeable about homelessness and how they myriad of ways that people can help. More detailed information on his plan to address homelessness can be found on his website.
Following Ryu, members of the Hancock Park HOA board gave short reports on various efforts underway by the association.
Marty Beck, chair of the Security and Safety Committee, urged everyone to use their car and home alarms, report suspicious activities and be sure to take in trash cans and newspapers or use a service like SSA when they are out of town.
Debra Trainer reported the association has planted 70 new trees. If residents want to plant street trees, they should check the website for their block and contact the association for help. In addition, she reported that 14 new palms were planted in the median on Highland Avenue, and the Hollywood Beautification team will now pick up the trash in the median to help keep it clean. Finally, she reminded everyone to be sure to deep water their trees.
Jen Devore, chair of the Block captains and neighborhood notification system, reported that almost every block has a volunteer block captain, important infrastructure for helping everyone to get to know their neighbors in the event of an emergency. She also said that the Association would soon be able to accept electronic payments of dues.
Erik Story, Filming Liaison for the HOA, reported there have been 96 filming days in the neighborhood. He said he is frequently in touch with FilmLA about upcoming shoots, which tend to be in the “hot spots” on Rossmore, Las Palmas, McCadden, North and South June Streets. He added that if residents know a shoot is coming, they tend to be ok with it, so he tries to keep everyone informed. He reviewed the association’s voluntary filming guidelines, which permit filming from 7 am – 10 pm weekdays; no filming is permitted on weekends and holidays.
Lastly, Bill Newby, chair of the Highland Median Committee, reported the City will be mowing the grass in the median every two weeks now and, while there is still some work to be done, there has been a concerted effort to fix sprinklers, which should keep the grass and trees alive.
Finally, the results of the vote were announced, and the following board members were elected to serve another year: Patrica Alexander, Tim Allyn, Cindy Chvatal-Keane, Dave Gajda Greg Glasser, Susan Grossman, Indy Flore, Joel Kozberg, William Newby, Pam Newhouse, Erik Story, Deb Trainer, Jon Vein, Victoria Vickers, and James Wolf.
